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Revelation Online – First Look

Revelation Online is an action-MMORPG and possibly the best execution of this formula that I’ve experienced. The game centers around your adventures in a mystical world filled with gods and demons as you fight to become the most powerful demonslayer in the realm. The story isn’t quite as generic as I’m making it sound; it has its genuinely interesting moments but I did find myself skipping the cutscenes that could be skipped more often than not; Not because the story wasn’t good, but because I really wanted to get back into the gameplay.

RO takes elements of action combat seen previously in games like Neverwinter, Wildstar, and Guild Wars 2 and presents them in the way that I believe they were always meant to be. Enemy attacks use telegraphs that should be dodged to avoid or lessen damage, and they show up a lot more frequently than in other games that have used this system. Your offense focuses mainly on executing combos and using your abilities which all feel incredibly satisfying. The beautiful visual effects really give your attacks a sense of impact This very active dodging system and the ability to chain combos together like this really give the combat a sense of urgency and a pace that made it feel less like an MMO and more like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry. It did feel a little like Blade and Soul, but this game did feel faster to me. I felt like I had to respond more times and more quickly than I did in Blade and Soul.

The game has six playable classes right now with their own playstyles and strengths: Gunslinger, a ranged dps class, Blademaster, a melee dps class, Spiritshaper, a magic user and support class, Vanguard, a tank class which is what I play, Swordmage, which uses elemental magic and excel at AOE damage, and Occultists, another magic class. Character customization is pretty good in the game; it’s no Black Desert Online, of course, but it does allow for a decent amount of personalization and as long as you can avoid the really creepy doll-eyes that some of the NPCs seem to be cursed with you’re certain to make an awesome looking character. Also you eventually can get wings and fly, making your character look even more awesome or dorky, depending on your outlook.

The game’s rhythm flows between questing in the open world which is pretty huge, to fighting thing in instanced dungeons and the semi-isolated story mode segments where other players and npcs are hidden from view.

Aside from that, the structure of the game is standard MMO fare, and that’s not a bad thing. You do dungeons and quests to level up until you reach the level cap and then do raids and the like. The game takes an interesting stance on the level-cap though which is cool. The level cap for a server begins at 49, and once a certain number of people (which all research I’ve done points to 500 or so) reach the level cap or two weeks have passed the cap gets raised by ten levels. This is a really interesting way to handle the scale of power, but it seems like it could get out of hand if you had a large number of hardcore players driving the cap up constantly. The game has only been in open beta for a couple of days now at time of recording so we’ll have to see how this plays out.

Revelation does have an in-game shop and you’re even encouraged to visit it in a training quest to see what kinds of things can be found. The only gameplay-effecting items I could find were various EXP boosts which could be useful for getting to cap quickly or to catch up to a friend who has passed you, but I was able to reach level 22 and gain a mount in an hour and some change of gameplay so the leveling in this game really doesn’t need much help. Like Guild Wars 2 or Warframe you can buy armor skins to make you the most magnificent of monster mass murderers but since they don’t offer any stats that I could find, the game avoids the dreaded pay to win stamp for now.

Revelation Online offers a fast paced, fluid, and fun combat experience for someone who wants to have a more traditional MMORPG experience without the tedium that comes from the traditional MMORPG tab-target style combat. The only real problems I encountered with the game were stuttering issues after the initial install, but these were fixed by closing and re-opening the game. The heavy traffic on the servers caused Jason’s client to crash several times, but I wasn’t able to recreate these problems so your mileage may vary. Another issue I encountered with the game was that there were a lot of run here, talk to the guy segments when I really wanted to jump into fighting monsters. This eases up as you go on and they throw more of the good stuff at you. Still Revelation Online, for a free to play MMO, offers one of the best experiences I’ve had in a long time especially where combat and visuals are concerned.

All in all, I give Revelation Online a “less talky, more punchy” out of ten.